


cor contritum quasi cinis

by uluithiad_naur



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Introspection, Kinda, pretentious use of latin, the anne/ rochefort is the super one-sided type ofc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 03:48:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4904419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uluithiad_naur/pseuds/uluithiad_naur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>she is his life and his angel and his god, but his god most of all, cruel and distant and demanding, yet worthy of everything his pitiful self can give, and no god rejects a faithful servant (he has been nothing but faithful) and even as he thinks words like supplication and adoration, he manipulates and demands and destroys (it is all he knows)</p>
<p>this is justice, because he deserves for what he has done, he deserves, he was religious but he had learned that hell is empty and heaven is earned, and he has earned, but there is no forever and he is not that patient anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cor contritum quasi cinis

**Author's Note:**

> okay, so I'm not really happy with how this turned out, but whatever, I've been promising myself I'll redo it since I wrote it during series 2 and I haven't, so it's going up anyway. I think maybe I've been a little too sympathetic. Obviously, I'm not trying to paint Rochefort as any kind of good guy, because he is pretty awful, but he always interested me as a character. Maybe I'll do my totally insane fuckhead headcanon-Rochefort justice sometime. Yeah, it's his POV really so I can't discuss anything particularly rationally. Also, if you care at all about canon or historical accuracy (Rochefort and Anne are the same age and grew up together in this) then, uh, sorry? I know jack shit about very much, it's been so long since s2 I'm not even sure this is in character, hell, I wrote it mid s2 anyway.
> 
> teen because rochefort is not a happy bunny
> 
> also no beta and the title is 'my contrition is like ashes'  
> also disclaimer: not mine
> 
> Hope you enjoy it! Feedback, is, as always, very much appreciated.

_Kyrie, eleison._  
_Christe, eleison_

 

His love was pure.

They were fourteen, and she was pretty and clever, and he was serious and in love. The sun rose benevolently in those days, and spring was shy and warm and innocent. Fourteen then, and sure of the nature of her feeling for him (his feelings for her) and sixteen and infatuated and eighteen and we have grown out of this Anne but I will not forget you he had said, and I must marry but I will remember you (brother) she had said and he was young and heartbroken and gave her gifts and promises and she gave him her beautiful, mysterious smiles.

In the passionate throes of his his first love, he watched the sun rise and set, and when he didn't matter to its cycle and he turned away in frustration, still it rose and set.

He had given her a rose once. It was white and pink and delicate and beautiful in all the ways she was, except for the thorns, he thought, and he bled as he cut them out, one by one, but blood was nothing because she was his heart. (later, he marveled at the strength of feeling of his youth. Much later, it filled him with scorn, yet still he would bleed for her)

Years later, spring was cold, and the sun was white but grey somehow, things grew and multiplied but were sickly and without vigour. He was consumed by the politics of his age, and she was only a name and a face and the sunrise pink of his first love. He had moved on and he was busy and she didn't cross his mind, but he didn't need her (a dove trapped on a rock, a pitiless wind, a rose and she would wither but he couldn't help her). She belonged to the idyllic dayspring of his youth, and he was not young and immature, not any more.

He had always thought Louis a hapless fool, he reminded himself. But he wasn't bitter.

 

_Dies irae, dies illa_  
_Solvet saeclum in favilla_

 

When he was in hell and didn't see the sun (every season was barren, every day dark, and in spring he burned, fiery orange, but closer to black than to sunrise) he thought of his position and his work, his ambition, but he was not so strong, he loved power, but this was stripped away like so much peeling burning skin and bones and sinew, stretched and torn and ashes, because he burned until she was all he had left. Spring was cruel and merciless and sunrise unfeeling, and she was hope in hell so more than priceless (nothing is priceless).

He didn't need poetry, or metaphors, her love wasn't anything, wasn't like anything, he couldn't acknowledge what she was to him now because he didn't understand it himself. He had always been a pragmatist.

He didn't need to separate the tortured strands of lust and desperation and the obsession in his roots, and never love, he didn't know it these days, but without it, what was he? Her love was as absolute as his life force, because they were the same.

(He was not broken, not twisted, not damaged beyond recognition, he was not corrupted because he was fourteen and she was pure and she could never be corrupted because she made him whole, his love was pure because it had been forged in innocence and honed by flame)

 

_Quantus tremor est futurus,_  
_quando judex est venturus,_  
_cuncta stricte discussurus!_

 

When he came to the French court, the sun was bleeding into the ground, but slowly, a festering wound and a slow death. He detested Louis as a poor and indecisive (weak, ungrateful) ruler (man), who had too much power (Anne) and not enough intelligence. France needed someone strong (unscrupulous) to fill Richelou's void and Rochefort knew he could do it, knew he could be worthy of serving France again (having her)

He would have called Spain a demanding master, but Spain hadn't mastered him, hadn't broken him (although she had surely changed him). She was a different god, one he served from necessity and fear and an ulterior motive, and not his god, the one he served in devotion and adoration.

He was tired of justifying his motives (not because they were fragmented and twisted out of themselves). He was a man (a monster) possessed, he couldn't stop to think because some part of him knew everything would come crashing down, that his careful reality wasn't the one his senses reported.

 

 

_Judex ergo cum sedebit,_  
_quidquid latet, apparebit,_  
_nil inultum remanebit._

 

It was an ominous autumn dusk, stars dim and cloaked in foreboding, the tense worried heat before a storm, and he wasn't self serving, he wasn't just another man playing the game for power and influence, because all of it, all of it was for her, because she was his angel and his life and his god, but most of all his god, cruel and distant and perfect, worthy of all his pitiful self could give, and no god rejects a faithful servant (he has been nothing but faithful) and even as he thinks words like supplication and adoration he manipulates and demands and destroys (that is all he knows), and this is justice, because he deserves for what he has done, he deserves, he was religious but he has learned that hell is empty and heaven is earned (he has earned, and he is patient, but there is no forever and he couldn't wait that long anyway)

Noises are too loud and colours too bright, yet he feels no remorse as he cuts innocents down. No one is innocent, after all, but he realised long ago the invalidity of that justification. He doesn't need justification. He can't see them as more than actors and pictures, he can't comprehend a person existing outside of himself (and her), he's living in a world of statues and paintings and- he's fine with that, has been for a long time, he doesn't need to feel anything but contempt for them when he has a guiding star, a sunrise like the one he is watching (the cycle continues even when he can't anymore)

(sometimes, he thinks to himself, late when it doesn't matter, he thinks maybe he is just broken and maybe he'll fail, and maybe- maybe he _should_ fail because he doesn't know how _they_ experience pain, but he knows how he does, and he wonders maybe if there's more to everything than himself, but it's all so foreign, and he doesn't need to understand. He's a pragmatist, not a philosopher, after all. ll he needs is drive, and when he wakes up, he remembers what he has and what he has achieved and what he must achieve and it's enough to push him far, far away from dangerous, self-sabotaging thoughts)

She betrays him, and he doesn't understand, he is so frustrated, so twisted inside himself, and he can't- 

Eventually, he makes his own understanding. He can. The musketeer, the puppet, is just a jest of his devotion, his Judas, and Judas was only the instrument of a greater test, but still Judas was punished, as the musketeer will be punished, and all will be at rights

And when everything falls apart and all he can hear is screaming, he blunders on because he doesn't remember how to stop, he is so far beyond able to redeem himself that he careens onward, in the hope that somehow it'll be different, if only he tries harder, and he can see the light ahead but he isn't sure if it's sunrise or flames

Night fall midwinter, but he cannot see the stars for fire, and he has no use for platitudes and justifications and explanations because he would have to entertain the possibility that he is wrong, and if all this was for nothing, he, they, she- is nothing, and whatever he is, whatever she is, whatever they (didn't) have, are the tragic, imagined, damaged parts of a terrible, broken, animal whole

 

_Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?_  
_quem patronum rogaturus,_  
_cum vix justus sit securus?_

 

(both of them, because it has been so long since she existed outside of himself, and they exist on the brink, waiting to burn)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feel free to leave a comment (and by that I mean I'm literally begging ;))
> 
> Latin (from the requiem, if you're interested, lifted straight from this handy translation of Mozart's, specifically http://www.stmatthews.com/choir/mozartsrequiem.htm)
> 
> Kyrie, eleison.  
> Christe, eleison.  
> Lord, have mercy on us.  
> Christ, have mercy on us.  
> Dies irae, dies illa  
> Solvet saeclum in favilla  
> Day of wrath, day of anger  
> will dissolve the world in ashes
> 
> Quantus tremor est futurus,  
> quando judex est venturus,  
> cuncta stricte discussurus!  
> Great trembling there will be  
> when the Judge descends from heaven  
> to examine all things closely.
> 
> Judex ergo cum sedebit,  
> quidquid latet, apparebit,  
> nil inultum remanebit.  
> When the judge takes his place,  
> what is hidden will be revealed,  
> nothing will remain unavenged.
> 
> Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?  
> quem patronum rogaturus,  
> cum vix justus sit securus?  
> What shall a wretch like me say?  
> Who shall intercede for me,  
> when the just ones need mercy?


End file.
